TFA is light on statistics and can only describe the water usage in terms like:
> AI data centers require vast amounts of water for cooling, with a recent study finding that the technology used as much water annually as people drink from water bottles worldwide.
But that is a pretty small fraction of total water use. Even if you drink as much water as health experts recommend and get all of it from one-use plastic bottles (which the health experts probably don't recommend and environmental experts definitely don't) that would be far less water than you use to run the dishwasher (which to my understanding is more water-efficient than doing dishes by hand) or to take a bath or shower. To say nothing of agricultural use.
1vuio0pswjnm7•58m ago
zahlman•43m ago
TFA is light on statistics and can only describe the water usage in terms like:
> AI data centers require vast amounts of water for cooling, with a recent study finding that the technology used as much water annually as people drink from water bottles worldwide.
But that is a pretty small fraction of total water use. Even if you drink as much water as health experts recommend and get all of it from one-use plastic bottles (which the health experts probably don't recommend and environmental experts definitely don't) that would be far less water than you use to run the dishwasher (which to my understanding is more water-efficient than doing dishes by hand) or to take a bath or shower. To say nothing of agricultural use.